Hey, Uprooters, it's me, Adam Mahoney, here again from Capital B. But this time, I'm coming to you from my new home in New Orleans. 

Last month, with the help of my girlfriend, I packed up two boxes and two duffle bags and set off on the 2,000-mile journey between Los Angeles and the Crescent City. My 20-year-old Toyota hatchback trucked through snow, hail, and rain storms, passing by the nation's largest energy producer – a nuclear plant in Arizona –, a coal plant in New Mexico, one of largest wind farms in the country in Texas, and the country's largest concentration of chemical and fossil fuel plants in Louisiana. 

As I made it across the country, I came back to a thought that has constantly crossed my mind over the last year: how we get around and how that relates to and dictates our energy usage, yes, but also how it impacts our work as journalists. 

Since the pandemic began, I went from living in Chicago (which arguably has the nation's second-best transit system), a place where I never, ever felt the need to be in a car, to Los Angeles, a place where even when I tried my hardest, I somehow always found myself in one.  

As a result, I feel like my reporting took a dip, too. When I sat on the Red Line or the 22 Clark bus in Chicago, I met my neighbors; sometimes, they'd tell me stories (like this one), and other times, I'd just observe and scribble in my notebook or type on my phone app. From the driver's seat of my car, none of those things are possible. 

In New Orleans, I hope to get back to using my work to be a more regular part of the communities around me. (However, I know that won't be too easy in a state idling in the bottom half of the nation for public transit spending and is the second-most unsafe state for pedestrians. But isn't that a story within itself?) 

I guess this is a disjointed way of getting on my soapbox to say that, as journalists, we should try our hardest to be active members of the communities we're reporting with and for. It makes the work easier and more impactful when you see the issues because they also affect you, and in return, the stories are a lot less difficult to find. 

I know that oftentimes, it's effortless to lose this vision, especially when you're caught up in the fallacy of objectivity and the supposed separation of reporter and source. But we're impacted by these issues too, and when you care about your neighbor or the person you see at the corner store or on the bus every day, I think you'll be more likely to do right by them through your work. 

So, in the absolutely least condescending way possible, I'm encouraging us to all go out and touch a little more grass and strike up a few more conversations with our neighbors. The work and the world might thank us for it.